


Eschatology, Interrupted

by Bibliotecaria_D



Series: After the End [5]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:58:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibliotecaria_D/pseuds/Bibliotecaria_D
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life keeps going after the Apocalypse. Vortex doesn’t want to die, even when he should.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The world isn’t over, yet, and so Spike will step back from that ledge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eschatology, Interrupted

Life keeps going after the Apocalypse. Vortex doesn’t want to die, even when he should.

 

**Title:** Eschatology, Interrupted  
 **Warning:** Overblown prose, angst, death  
 **Rating:** PG?  
 **Continuity:** G1, Season 3 -- _After the End_ AU  
 **Characters:** Spike Witwicky, Perceptor, Vortex  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** _"There's something out there ...."_

[* * * * *]  
 **The world isn’t over, yet, and so Spike will step back from that ledge.**   
[* * * * *]

Earth had survived the Quintessons.

This was not so insignificant a thing. Cybertron, after all, had not. So despite the bitter-laced non-triumph of it, it _was_ a statement worth making. This roundish chunk of spinning solid matter still had atmosphere, a working ecosystem, and most of its major features still intact. It surface might have been rendered uninhabitable in some areas, whole species of living creatures exterminated from its surface, but it would be human arrogance to claim that Earth itself hadn’t survived. It would even be a mistake to say that humankind hadn’t survived. 

“The End of Days has come!” cried the crazed men, wild-eyed in the ruins of the cities. “We are undone!” wept the women in the fortified compounds the survivors constructed.

That was a broad generalization, when really the details were as merciless but left shell-shocked pieces of mankind still alive. In reality, on the large scale and in the wider picture, mankind would make it. It was on the small scale that the individuals suffered and the percentages added up.

“Sterile,” said Perceptor, optics weary. “The majority of North America, Europe, and Asia have lost its reproductive abilities to the biological warfare engendered by the Quintessons’ first invasion. Children between the ages of six and twelve years of age may have escaped absorbing the worst dosages into their pre-pubescent reproductive organs; only time will tell.” The blue of his optics dimmed, and the ache behind them betrayed his dispassionate voice. “Children under the age of five succumbed to the initial sweep of diseases, as did fetuses in the womb. Most pregnant women died when the mutations and blood rot crossed the placental barrier. For 95% of the men and women on the affected continents, sterility and associated physical and psychological disorders will be a greater cause of death than natural causes, including lack of consumable food or water.”

Spike’s laughter was nothing more than a charred rasp, the humor long since burnt from his hollow voice. “That’s a natural cause, now?” 

The Autobot scientist looked down at him, but the pain in his optics blotted the human from his vision. Some failures were so spectacular that a mech couldn’t handle another reminder, and Perceptor’s traumatized mind simply could no longer see Spike. “Compared to the other causes, yes.”

Sadly, he was right. Mass graves and piles of corpses filled the world, and rare were the bodies killed by something as relatively natural as starvation or old age. Violence accounted for far too many of the survivors, fighting out of despair, paranoia, or directionless hatred. Sometimes they fought over resources or out of nothing but fear, because cooperation had died alongside understanding and compassion. Intense nuclear fallout rendered many of the highest-yield agricultural areas radioactive for years to come, which didn’t stopped ignorant, desperate humans from harvesting from the deadly ground. Governments didn’t exist to stop them, and there were no more networks to spread education or awareness about what was unseen but fully capable of killing them. The Autobots helped where and when they could, guilt driving them to offer whatever they could, but the news they brought the survivors was never good.

For most people, moving to a different area wasn’t an option. Where would they go? Somewhere else, where it was worse? Yes, this area was a deathtrap. But there wasn’t an area on the East Coast, on the Mediterranean Sea, in China, _anywhere_ that was any better, and the Quint-engineered diseases would wipe them out wherever they went even if they did survive the rigors of post-apocalyptic travel.

For whole swathes of the world’s surface, the current generation of humans living there would be the last. The planet had begun the Quint Wars with more than six billion humans. It’d ended the Wars with less than three billion. If the number sounded high enough there could be hope, an optimistic chance for rebuilding, it didn’t take into account how many were sick, old, injured, or merely hanging on until their weak grasp pried free. That number dropped every day. Drastically, depending on how badly the weather stirred biological agents or radioactive particles into the air that day. 

Earth had survived the Quintessons, but human civilization had not.

“The End of Days!” was the prophets’ creed, preaching as if the world was over. “Undone!” proclaimed the women, like they were all that made up the planet.

Spike listened to their words and knew that they rang untrue. There was more to Earth than humankind. There always had been, but never more than now, when refugees from another world sought shelter here. They had started out differently, inhabitants of another world, but they were Terrans now. The other world was gone. This was the only home they had, now. 

So he returned to the Autobots, and he didn’t acknowledge their guilt. He didn’t absolve the Cybertronians of responsibility, but only God could judge who had ultimately killed his wife, his son, and most of their race. For himself, he chose to blame the Quintessons. It was enough, because these days, it felt all the more important to represent those who called his planet home: the dead and the dying and the living. Because the Earth had survived, and the responsibility he owed her therefore had as well. He was still the ambassador between Autobots and humans. 

Familiar faces froze as he walked up the rutted road they’d eked out of the remains of the highway leading to the old _Ark_ site. He was a human approaching a race his kind raged at, and they didn’t know what to do in reaction. The Decepticons backed away, openly uncomfortable, because it was one thing to conquer a world but another to try and quietly settle it. The Autobots leaned forward, straining to help but already flinching back from the hot sting of rejection. 

He only hauled off the hazmat suit’s helmet to bare his own grief-ravaged face to them, these awkward foster children of another world, standing before a lone human like they hoped for adoption, or at least a cessation of hostilities. Standing in peace because there’d been too much war, and they just wanted it to be _over_. 

Some turned away, unable to face him, or rather, unable to face what he reminded them of. Some just stared, unable to believe he’d come back, shocked that he’d somehow dodged death to return. Others accepted him, welcomed him back with a gratitude that bordered on anguish. Autobot and Decepticon alike, Terrans all; just survivors and refugees like any other left in the world.

The makeshift colony felt more like home than anywhere else, but that wasn’t saying much. Spike’s home hadn’t survived the Quintessons any more than his family had. 

Maybe that’s why he listened to the prophets and the women. He knew they were wrong, but they were also right. Out there in the rubble of cities and homes, ruined lives carried painted placards or wailed their messages aloud, and their civilization would soon be no more. In the colony, refugees from the stars built the foundations for a society mankind no longer had, and they would live. Both were equally right, and equally wrong. Earth had survived, but Spike had still buried it with his wife and son in ashy gravesites, undone and ended.

In the ruins of a city, much later, Vortex asked him, “Why did you come back?” 

Spike looked out over the destroyed buildings, and he knew the Decepticon wasn’t asking about walking up that road to the _Ark_. There was more to Earth than humans or Autobots, and more to his return than forgiveness or understanding. It wasn’t about helping the Autobots anymore than listening to madmen rave was about believing their ranting words. It was about survival, and loyalty. 

He sat here today with someone else who should have died and continued to live, but on Earth, that didn’t mean that they’d beaten the odds. Looking at it a certain way, they were all dying every day, coming undone until the very end. The world had died, but it still survived. Those on her just lingered, standing in the limbo at the bitter edge until something finally pushed them over. 

“There’s something out there,” Spike said at last, “worth coming back for.”


End file.
